Biophysical Society Bulletin | January 2024

Communities

Alla Kostyukova Membership Committee

Alla Kostyukova

What has been a highlight from your volunteer experience? A highlight has been to meet students who received travel awards to the Annual Meeting and to talk to them. And to know that now they are forging new friendships and meeting their future collaborators, just as I did many years ago. Do you have advice for others who might be thinking about volunteering? It is important to give back to the Society. It is also a wonder ful chance to network. I recommend that all my students and postdocs volunteer. When not volunteering for BPS, what do you work on? I teach classes—it takes up to 40% of my time. I am a co-pri mary-investigator in two National Institutes of Health grants that help undergraduate students underrepresented in STEM to be prepared for graduate programs in biomedical re search. I mentor graduate students and postdocs, and I enjoy watching them develop into professionals. Getting new data, understanding mechanisms of protein functioning, discussing with my students results of experiments, and helping them to design new ones give me enjoyable moments, and that is the reason why I chose to pursue a career in academia. When I have free time, I go hiking. There are so many breathtaking places to explore in the mountains of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

Is this your first volunteer position for BPS? If not, what other positions have you held? I was a Council Member of the Intrinsically Disordered Pro teins Subgroup from 2011 to 2013. Starting from my PhD training to the present time, I work with proteins that have large intrinsically disordered regions (IDR). In the mid-1980s, the concept of IDR did not exist—the disordered regions were regarded as misfolded, and to publish my data we had to prove that the proteins were in their native state. Therefore, my first volunteer position was for that specific Subgroup. Why do you volunteer? I became a member of the Biophysical Society in 2001. I worked in the laboratory of Yuichiro Maeda at the RIKEN Institute, and he recommended that I go to my first BPS Annual Meeting to present our data. Attending my first BPS meeting was a turning point in my life. My future collaborator and friend, Norma Greenfield , came to my poster and said that Sarah Hitchcock-DeGregori was interested if I would be willing to join their lab. At the end of that year, I joined the lab. Sarah became a great mentor for me, and her support and career advice helped me to become who I am today. At my second BPS meeting, I made several friends who have become my collaborators and have remained close for the past 20 years. Volunteering for the BPS Membership Committee allows me to help researchers from various states and countries attend meetings and find new job opportunities and collaborators.

The Biophysical Society is grateful to its Industry Partners.

For Industry Partner Membership information, contact alevine@biophysics.org. SILVER GOLD

PLATINUM

January 2024

15

THE NEWSLETTER OF THE BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY